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00:00Let's start off, first of all, with local politics. There's been a lot of hand-wringing
00:04over the possibility that Mondani does win the election here in New York. And, you know,
00:10Wall Street, real estate folks, a lot of people who are used to the status quo are concerned
00:15about some of the policies that he's proposing with regards to rent freezes and other things
00:18that could affect their business. I am curious, just in your read, and having been in this city
00:23for so long, does that actually matter as much? Because it's one thing to go out on the campaign
00:27trail and make these promises. But as we've seen with other progressive mayors like Bill de Blasio,
00:32like David Dinkins, and a few others in the past, once you get in there, things change a lot.
00:37Most observers agree that it's going to be nearly impossible for a lot of Zoran's campaign promises
00:44to come to fruition because they require buy-in from legislators in Albany. I think that the
00:49relationship that Zoran has with business leaders and the police in particular will be crucially
00:56important if he does become mayor next year. And he is the front runner. The key variable in this race
01:01is whether Curtis Sliwa remains in the race into November, because right now Sliwa and Andrew Cuomo
01:08are dividing the anti-Zoran vote. I am curious just about what you'd make of his, of Mondani's rise.
01:15And primarily in the context of your ascent, too. There was sort of this hunger, particularly
01:21back in 2020 and even prior to that, for candidates who weren't from the traditional establishment,
01:27whether it was Democrat, Republican, whatever. And he seems to kind of be in that vein for better
01:32or for worse. And I am curious as to what you think is driving that. I think a lot of it is use of social
01:38media in a really native and adept way. I mean, you can see Zoran's message really resounded throughout
01:45the electorate among young people in particular, grew the voting base by tens of thousands in the primary.
01:52One thing, though, I think people should understand is that you had maybe 11 percent of New Yorkers vote in
01:59that Democratic primary. You need to have been a registered Democrat months in advance.
02:04Zoran's win in that primary may or may not reflect, actually, like the majority of New Yorkers.
02:10And it's one reason why I've been for open primaries here in New York and around the country, because I think that would
02:15be a truer test of someone's popular appeal.
02:19Well, you make a good point that the primary doesn't neatly map over to the actual election.
02:25And you mentioned that Zoran Mamdani's campaign in particular has used social media very well.
02:30It seems like they have a lot of organic grassroots buzz.
02:32I want to compare and contrast what you make of the Mamdani campaign compared to what former Governor Andrew Cuomo has done,
02:39what Eric Adams had done in his campaign before he dropped out.
02:42No, I talked about your native use of it.
02:46I think a lot of it is generational.
02:48Zoran's in his early, mid-30s.
02:49I think Andrew Cuomo might be in his mid-60s or so.
02:54And so it's the difference between taking out your smartphone and using an app, which is what Zoran is doing a lot of the time.
03:01With Andrew Cuomo, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a staffer.
03:04And that might not seem like a lot, but it's kind of a lot.
03:09And everyone can feel it.
03:11Everyone can tell.
03:12You never know.
03:13It could be, you know, Andrew Cuomo firing off those tweets.
03:16Who knows, though?
03:17I do want to broaden out and talk a little bit about America's broader national political scene.
03:23You, of course, are no fan of the two-party system.
03:26You founded your own third party as well.
03:28And over the summer, Politico had reported that, you know, you had been in touch with Elon Musk.
03:33He has similar ambitions as well.
03:36Have those conversations progressed at all since the summer?
03:39What has progressed is America's disenchantment with the two major parties.
03:44And you see it now with the context of the shutdown.
03:46But our system's not working.
03:48The question is what's going to get it to work.
03:50It's either going to be some kind of miraculous restoration of one party or the other,
03:54or it's going to be a group of independent Americans who raise their hands and say, look, we get it.
04:00We need something new.
04:01I'm on the record as wanting to talk to just about anyone who wants to make that new political alternative happen.
04:07And we did have some interesting conversations over the summer.
04:10How'd they end up?
04:12Well, let's just say the desire among Americans is growing all the time.
04:17And I see that on many different dimensions.
04:20Do you think it's viable, though, in this environment that we could have not just a third party,
04:25but a third party that could actually be a formidable challenger to the two-party Democrat-Republican system?
04:30A hundred percent.
04:31And I'm on Bloomberg's air right now.
04:33I mean, we all know Mike Bloomberg should be the patron saint of this as someone who ran for office of the Democrat,
04:38independent, and Republican quite successfully.
04:41But I'm a math guy.
04:42There are 500,000 local races around the country.
04:45And tens of thousands of those offices are technically nonpartisan.
04:49Forward already has dozens of mayors and city council members and local elected officials who say,
04:55look, I'm tired of apologizing for Team Blue or Team Red.
04:58I'm Team America or I'm Team my constituents.
05:01You could easily see that get to hundreds, even thousands of locally elected officials right now,
05:07like not even some kind of crazy new infusion of resources.
05:10And to create a different dynamic in Washington, D.C., you would probably only need three or four U.S. senators
05:15and maybe six or eight members of Congress, either or, in order to completely change the politics of this country.
05:22Are you actively, though, working towards this right now?
05:25Or is this just kind of something that you would like to see?
05:27I mean, we didn't get 59 elected officials rising by accident.
05:31And, you know, we're going to have exciting announcements.
05:33I will say one of the top 40 mayors in the U.S. is going to announce their joining forward in the coming days.
05:39So, of course, we're working on it.
05:41And we should point out, of course, that Michael Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP and this network.
05:48But when it comes to moving away from the two-party system to potentially a three-party system, maybe even more,
05:54for a lot of people that's viewed as sort of a pipe dream.
05:56And when it comes to making it in actuality, do you think it could start at the national level in a presidential election?
06:03Or do you think that it has to start more local and then build up from there?
06:07I think either could work.
06:09And you can imagine an independent primary with Mark Cuban and Mike Bloomberg and some other folks running.
06:16And the majority of Americans would say, sign me up for that.
06:18And you could have people vote in that primary on their smartphones in real time as opposed to this strange, anachronistic, archaic, non-representative primary system
06:29that takes us to, no offense to anyone, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, et cetera.
06:34I mean, it would be modern folks watching this right now who are like, oh, I run my life that way.
06:38I run my investment portfolio that way.
06:40Why am I allowing these parties to run our politics like it's still, you know, the 19th or 20th century?
06:45Are you thinking about yourself running for office again?
06:49Any office?
06:49Well, Romain, I get urged to do so every day by a New Yorker such as yourself.
06:54I want good things for the people of New York.
06:56I want good things for the people of America.
06:58And the question is how we're going to get there.
07:00And my argument is that it's not going to happen in this current setup.
07:04So we should just, you know, roll up our sleeves and try and build something that will get it done.
07:09Is our political system, though, healthy enough?
07:12And I say that, and this is going to be a bit of a loaded question, but there's a lot of concerns about the direction that the current federal administration, Trump administration, has taken us.
07:20Whether we get to a midterm next year or a presidential election in 2028, that is even going to be fair enough to even allow for the potential of a third party candidate.
07:30I agree with your questioning our institution's ability to function.
07:36It's one reason why, for example, I was championing Dean Phillips challenging Joe Biden back in January 24, being like, look, the Democratic Party should have an actual democratic process, which they did not.
07:47Which ended up with, in my mind, you know, like the wrong candidate and a result that I wasn't very happy with.
07:55You were disappointed that they that they just basically selected Kamala Harris without an actual.
08:00Yeah, my joke was that they should change their name from the Democratic Party to the selector party, because that was apparently their process.
08:06And a guy named Dean Phillips gave his political career trying to make that case.
08:10He was a sitting member of Congress in good standing, and they pilloried him for making the point that, look, running an 81-year-old unpopular incumbents, not the right course of action, instead of listening to Dean.
08:23What did they do?
08:24They cast him out of politics altogether.
08:27And I was there with Dean in New Hampshire making that case.
08:30So I agree with you that the institutions have not lived up to their promises past period of time.
08:36The question is, can we rejuvenate them to the point that they can?
08:40Well, I think a lot of people share your frustration with how the Democratic primary went down in 2024.
08:46But you mentioned the current government shutdown.
08:48Of course, we're on day two.
08:49And I'd like to talk a little bit more about that, because it's interesting to see this situation where it feels like the shutdown is being used as a negotiation tactic on both sides when it comes to specific policies that want to be pushed through.
09:03And I wonder what you make of this in the political long term, what this could mean for both parties, because it seems like a delicate line that is being towed right now.
09:13I see this shutdown as, unfortunately, an emblem of the institutional disintegration that we've been witnessing this past several years.
09:20It's bad for the economy. It's bad for the American people.
09:24And the reason it's happening is that Chuck Schumer took a ton of heat when he extended government funding in March, because what the base of each party wants is a fighter who's going to stick it to the other side, regardless of what that means for government employees or the economy.
09:39So you have these perverse political incentives that are dragging both parties in directions that may not serve the American people.
09:48I think that's why this shutdown could drag on and on, because we're talking about politics instead of results or any degree of dealmaking common sense.
09:58So, Andrew, you're wearing a pin on your lapel. It says Noble. You recently founded Noble Mobile.
10:04And I'd love to talk about that a little bit, what you're trying to accomplish there.
10:08I know that you were partly inspired by Mark Cuban and what he's doing in the PBM space.
10:14Yes. Check it out. Americans are sad for a couple of reasons.
10:17Number one, we're not saving enough money. And number two, we're staring at our phones too much.
10:21What my friend Hassan Minhaj calls our rectangles of sadness. So Noble Mobile will cut your wireless bills.
10:29By the way, why do Americans pay twice as much as Europeans or Australians?
10:32Why?
10:33Because Verizon and AT&T are now paying $18 billion in shareholder dividends and not investing in network capacity anymore.
10:41I was a Verizon customer for 25 years, paying them $140 a month.
10:45And then I looked up, said, wait, why am I doing that?
10:47So Noble Mobile gets you closer to what you should be paying and will pay you more if you use your phone less.
10:53So the ad is me smacking phones out of people's hands.
10:56Smacking phones out of people's hands.
10:57But it's the first carrier that will pay you to use your phone less.
11:01You're also throwing these no phone parties. Maybe I'm getting the name correctly.
11:04I mean, how does that dovetail with all this?
11:06We had 800 people come out to a phone-free party in New York.
11:11The New Yorker, apparently they're writing an article about it for next week.
11:14Thousands of people around the country.
11:16And check it out.
11:17I'm old enough to remember going to a college party and not having a phone because it didn't exist yet.
11:21So what we do is we look at each other and maybe we say hello.
11:24No.
11:26Maybe you'd even get someone's info.
11:30So these offline parties have struck a chord and we're going all around the country with them.
11:35Offlineparty.com.
11:36I'm a party promoter in more ways than one.
11:37Okay.
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